Butchered Tongue

Thoughts Ahead of My One-Way Ticket to Dublin

I've been struggling a bit with my identity as I've been preparing to leave for Ireland. I've been told that I was Irish my entire life, and it's been a large part of my identity growing up in America. I was raised Catholic in an area of the country that is predominantly Protestant, my family drinks tea after meals at our gatherings (prepared in a kettle on the stove), I have letters and place names and stories from Ireland. My great grandfather's family home is now a pile of rocks in Mullaghglass, Ballynakill, Co. Galway, and he fished around the Carrickabullog rocks as a boy. There were weddings on Crump Island that lasted a week and long-gone cousins that ran barefoot on the Culfin strand.

Some Irish books that have been passed down to me, along with a family heirloom made of Irish tweed by M. O'Shaughnessy

To another American, I would certainly be considered "Irish." Stories and ancestors are how we form and view identities as a country of immigrants. To anyone else, though, I think I'd just be American. So what does it really mean to be Irish?

I listened to "Butchered Tongue" by Hozier from his new album Unreal Unearth for the first time today, and it reaffirmed my view of my identity as what I call an Irish-American. I proudly proclaim my heritage because it is something that my ancestors were not able to do. Their language, their culture, and their lives were stolen and destroyed, as was the language, culture, and the lives of so many other Irish people. I have been learning the Irish language for the past few years because it is a language that my family had to give up not only in Ireland, but as they assimilated in America. It died with the immigrants in my family, and we all grew up speaking English as a result. I am reclaiming Irish for myself, for my family, but ultimately for my ancestors who were forced to give up their native tongue. For me, learning Irish and this Fulbright journey are my best attempts at stitches for my family's own butchered tongue.

I may never be considered Irish by location of birth, but I hope that during my time in Ireland I become a bit more "Irish" as I immerse myself in the culture and language that may have been mine in another time, in another version of the world.

Is Meiriceánach mé, ach labhraím Gaeilge do mo shinsir.

Bernadette

This blog, Follow My Fulbright, is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of Bernadette John and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.